The hotel really looked great upon arrival. Great view, banana trees in the surroundings and every room with balcony.
We left our bags in the room and then took a cab (quite a drive, almost 10 km from the town) in to town. When we got back in the evening (after another long cab drive) we inspected our room more carefully. Well, it was nothing great - a typical early 80'ies decoration, but it seemed clean. When getting in to bed I found a ded "dried up" ant, but I thought nothing of it... bugs can get in sometimes. After we put the lights out and tried to get to sleep, we soon felt a crawling... bursting out of bed and hitting the lights, we found thousands of red ants (they bite!) in the room! On the floor, the cieling, the walls, the bed! Everywhere!

We ran up to the reception where and eldery man sat who didn't speak a word english. He did know what we meant though and came back with us to the room bringing a bugspray... but the spray did little good as there were sooo many ants! He actually used up the whole can, but the ants just keept on coming. It was like a horror movie and I started to cry. We went up to the reception with the man and wanted him to call a cab for us. He said that no cabs were operative after midnight. We stared calling ourselves and of course ther were cabs! He just lied not wanting us to leave!!! We finally took a cab back to town and found the wonderful hotell "Villa Rolandi" where there was (to our great luck) a room available.

The next day we went back to get our money back from this nightmare hotel. (because, of course we had to prepay our stay...) First they didn't want us to get our money back and offered us another room. I asked the receptionist if there were ants there and she said "well, not that many as in your first room". We declined, of course. Then we had too threaten with the tourist office to get them to agree on giving us our money back. We got almost all our money back, but not for the first night (and we didn't even spend the night and had to pay for another hotel). I asked the receptionist if she upon our ariival knew of the ant problem and after some lame excuses, she admitted that she did...

Overall, this was an experience from hell! DO NOT STAY HERE!!!

The Hotel Garrafon is a bit worn around the edges, but the rooms are large and clean, the beds comfortable, and the views unbeatable. Guests at the hotel have free use of the small beach club, located on a calm bay with turquoise water. There are one or two restaurants in walking distance, and it's easy to get a cab into town. Booking rooms is a challenge. We couldn't find an internet site, and the staff's English is limited, but our basic Spanish worked on the phone.

We just returned from a long weekend stay at another hotel on Isla Mujeres. Because our hotel did not have their own dive operation, they offered to sign us up for two-tank morning dives at Hotel Garrafon for Friday and Saturday mornings. After an hour late start on Friday morning, two dive shop employees accompanied the three divers out for the first dive.

When we surfaced from the first drift dive, the boat captain who said he would be watching our bubbles was approximately a quarter of a mile away and it took several minutes of whistling and waving to get his attention to come pick us up out of the open water. Upon our arrival back at the resort to reload the boat with new air tanks, we noticed that our dive knife and compass were missing from the gear bag we left on the boat during our dive. After searching all around the boat and dock, we found both the knife and compass hidden in the captain’s box beneath the steering wheel of the boat. As the two dive shop employees were the only people to have access to the boat during our dive, we chose to pay for our completed dive and leave the hotel immediately.

Scuba diving is a dangerous sport where safety and trust plays an utmost role of importance. After six years of nothing but fabulous diving experiences all over the world, we definitely learned a valuable lesson about researching dive shops more before each trip. Based on other reviews written on the hotel, we were shocked by our experience with Hotel Garrafon and wanted to suggest for other traveling snorkelers and divers to beware of the untrustworthy staff at this hotel.

We have stayed at the Garrafon Hotel at least 6 times. The view is beautiful with a great balcony. The snorkeling cannot be beat. We love this hotel as it offers us peace away from North Beach, where the snorkeling is perfect. The Garrafon park is located next to this hotel and is where people go to pay to snorkel. We do that for free from our hotel! This is not a fancy resort, the rooms are clean, yet a bit outdated but this place is great for privacy and calm. We always rent a car when in Cancun and cross to the island as we usually go to Playa Del Carmen also so we are not bothered by staying on the southern end of the island. Do not go here if you are looking for luxury. It is clean, safe, peaceful, and the staff are wonderful!